You Know You Were Born in the 1980s When...

You were born in the eighties and grew up in the nineties. You had the best of both worlds and wouldn’t want to be born in any other decade even if you could! Here’s to the last generation that grew up having lived a wild, exciting childhood that didn’t have anything to do with iPods, touch phones, tabs, 24x7 Internet or social networks. We actually went out to play with our friends in the evenings - and we turned out just fine. :D
You know you were born in the 1980s when...
1. Your birth was probably at a government hospital, where your dad took your first picture on a colour film with a small camera.
2. Your birthday parties were a BIG deal, and they weren’t thrown at clubs or hotels but in your drawing room, where you played silly games and exchanged gifts.
3. You had posters of these men pasted on your bedroom wall:
4. You grew up watching TV shows such as Dekh Bhai Dekh, Nukkad, Philips Top Ten and Shriman Shrimati.
5. You went through a Cyndi Lauper phase.
6. You collected tazos by eating copious quantities of Ruffles Lays and Uncle Chips.
7. You still hold on to your old tape recorder and the cassettes you loved listening to.
8. And these were the artists you listened to:
9. The video games you played looked like this:
10. Sunday mornings were spent watching Ramayana. It was quite the ritual.
11. You used to attend the local Ramleela every year on the night before Dussehra.
12. Chandrakanta shaped your ideas about good and evil. And also bad hairstyles.
13. Remember Captain Vyom? Milind Soman was every young girl’s crush!
14. You sneaked out of school during lunch to catch the latest episode of Shaktiman every Saturday, 12 noon.
15. In the absence of Cartoon Network and Nick, you grew up watching Duck Tales, Talespin, Jungle Book and Disney Hour (on Sony).
16. Nazia Hassan was your idol. That’s the kind of rock star you wanted to be.
17. Your favourite kind of music was disco, and you still secretly wish that disco dancing makes a comeback someday.
18. Letter writing was an art form that you mastered very early in life. And chain letters!
19. You saved up loose change lying around the house to buy candy store treasures like these:
20. You hardly ever bought proper cassette tapes sold by labels. Throw in two songs by Backstreet Boys, Westlife, Savage Garden, a few Hindi numbers and – voila! – you had your customized mix tape that the local music store guy would do for you instead. You were cool like that.
21. Sneakers used to be super-trendy then. (Yeah, we were trendsetters.)
22. You watched Titanic in the hall even though your parents had forbidden it.
23. You remember the death of Princess Diana and the big scandal that followed.
24. Your parents still hold on to those giant photo albums from your childhood that have now started to turn yellow around the edges.
25. They also have your baby book, which also contains a lock of your hair that was chopped off at your mundan. :)
26. Your first bicycle was probably an Atlas or a Ladybird.
27. Your parents forced you to talk in English at the dining table so you could practice for school. Otherwise food wasn’t passed to you.
28. Your games of choice: Pitthu, Pakdan Pakdai, Hot and Cold, Chain Chain, Khokho, Badminton, Racing, Chungi, Dumb Charades, Statue and Stapu.
29. On long train journeys, you read Champak, Tinkle and Archie comics.
30. Y2K happened. And then nothing happened.
31. You went to school carrying these outdated accessories:
32. You grew up looking like a dufus. ’Cause, let’s face it, the ’80s and ’90s weren’t the greatest years for Indian fashion.
33. Remember the fake tattoo craze?
34. Aunties and Uncles from abroad used to get you Toblerone. Always.
35. Music videos actually had stories and really wonderful eye candy too.
36. Just Mohabbat and Hip Hip Hurray introduced you to the “grown-up” world and helped you to appear cool.

37. You fixed your TV by smacking it hard on its head. That would definitely do the trick.
38. You knew all your best friends’ landline numbers by heart. This was also the phase where you got pranked a lot as well. No caller ID yet!
39. You formed a proper “club” or group with friends and called it something groovy. You paid a subscription fee, had rules and regulations, secret codes and passwords, but no one really knew what the point of the club really was!
40. You watch kids these days wasting their childhood spending all their time indoors, Facebooking or watching television - and you thank God that you were lucky enough to have been born in the ’80s!
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